Methodology

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In order to locate where the richest and poorest Americans live, WalletHub analyzed the 50 states and the District of Columbia across three key metrics, including “income,” “GDP per capita” and “tax dollars per capita.” We assigned a double weight to the income metric as it represents a composite metric including various income brackets, which matters more to residents than GDP and taxes paid toward the federal government. Each of the latter received half a weight. For example, income less than $24,999, we allocated a negative weight to penalize states with a large percentage of its population earning a low income. For the remaining brackets, weight increases as income increases.

The income brackets and the corresponding weights used for this study are as follows:

Income less than $24,999: -1

Income between $25,000 and $49,999: 0

Income between $50,000 and $99,999: +1

Income between $100,000 and $199,999: +2

Income of $200,000 or more: +2.5

Source: Data used to create these rankings is courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.